


Then again, it was ‘52

by FalliciousPuns



Series: Fiedler's Llamas [1]
Category: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John Le Carré
Genre: Ashe - Freeform, Fiedler is beautiful ok, I could have been productive but instead I wrote this, LeaMAs IS nEVeR sOBeR, M/M, Spies & Secret Agents, yeah he's mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 12:38:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11036352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalliciousPuns/pseuds/FalliciousPuns
Summary: Ashe wasn't the only one Leamas had met in Berlin before.





	Then again, it was ‘52

**Author's Note:**

> OK SO.... I DONT KNOW IF HE MET ASHE IN 1952? I THINK THAT'S WHEN??? LET ME KNOW IF I'M WRONG

For some reason, Fiedler kept bringing Leamas to this restaurant in East Berlin, driving there all the way from the safehouse.  It wasn't even a particularly good restaurant.  It was a generic state-run setup off in an alleyway near the red-light district and propped up in between two bars, both of which were empty at this early in the morning. The food itself was devoid of all spice and personality, which Leamas remarked upon constantly.

“This food has about as much individuality as this pathetic zone you call a country,” he'd said.  “I'd wager that the soup you just had would taste the same if it were made in Siberia.”

Fiedler would give a little chuckle, as if Leamas were a child that had done something silly.

“It’s probably equally horrendous everywhere, is what I'm saying,” Leamas would grunt.  “Universally bad food is all you can get behind the curtain.”

Usually Leamas would have paid little attention to the repetition of this venue, thinking merely that Fiedler just liked this particular restaurant, but he doubted it.  

Whenever they came here, Fiedler’s gaze would always intensify, and Leamas would catch him staring into his eyes as if looking for a reaction.

When Fiedler noticed this, he would give Leamas a little half-grin, but almost immediately his face would fall, and he would begin to ask questions almost in self-defense.

That day, the questioning began with:

“Tell me about your early days in Berlin.  You came in 1947, am I right?”  It was always about Berlin.  

Leamas rolled his eyes.  “Yes.  I'd served in Germany during the war, and it was only natural for me to come back because I already had a network of agents- I've told you this before.”

Fiedler sighed and rubbed at his temples.  It hadn't been the answer he'd been looking for, it seemed.  After a long moment he looked up. 

“Do you remember meeting that agent, Ashe?”

Leamas screwed up his face in distaste.  “No.  According to him we met in ‘52, and I was drunk out of my mind then, what with cleaning up the mess the American Airlift made.”  

He shook his head bitterly.

“We have records of what happened- or rather, the MGB had records, which they've now passed onto the German agencies,” Fiedler said, seeming to become more excited.

Leamas cocked an eyebrow.  “Germans and their records,” he said under his breath.

“You were quite a regular in the bars around here, if you remember.  Drunk every night without fail,” Fiedler said, pulling out a file.  “Do you remember this one club called ‘ _ Schlanker blauer Liebhaber _ ’?”  He slid the file across the table and Leamas picked it up.  “It closed about five years ago, but I would have thought you'd remember, since you went there so much.  I believe that's where you ran into Ashe… it was quite a hub for the intelligence agencies, I’m told…”

But Leamas wasn't listening.  He was staring at the faded black and white picture of a night club- the neon sign proclaimed it the ‘ _ Schlanker blaguer Liebhaber _ ’.  Leamas blinked.   _ Slim blue lover _ … yes, the name of the club sounded familiar.  He even thought he recalled a certain scent about it.  What a horrible stench.

All of a sudden he felt sick.  He clutched his stomach, looking up at Fiedler in disgust, then retched.

“Leamas?  What's wrong?  Are you-?” Fiedler put a hand on his shoulder, gripping him almost hesitantly.

 

And all of a sudden he was back in a broken Berlin.  Through the night, Leamas could still see the building rigs set up to repair the city, but here, on this street, the glare of neon signs distracted him from the ruins of Nazi Germany.

He had just come out of the  _ Slim Blue Lover _ club and was feeling odd.  He'd tried a new drink tonight- he had no idea what - and it had disagreed with him.  Strongly.

“Oh God,” Leamas muttered to the night sky as he stumbled sideways.

It turned out he'd stumbled into the road.  Leamas, head still spinning, didn’t notice that he was stepping into the road until the Trabant’s headlights flooded his eyes with painful brightness.  There was a loud honking and a roar of tires.

Leamas thought he was dead.

But then something pulled at the back of his collar.  Leamas spun around, out of the road and into someone’s arms.  They toppled over into the sidewalk.  

It was the time of night when no one is outside, when there were no witnesses.

The person under Leamas squirmed out from under him, but was too late to avoid what followed.  Leamas retched twice and vomited all over the sidewalk, some of it spattering his saviour’s trousers.  

“Fuckin… Russian alcohol-  bastards,” he growled in barey comprehensible German.  Leamas retched again, coughing up more of his insides across the sidewalk.

The same person clutched at Leamas’ shoulder almost hesitantly, as if by touching him they would be infected with some kind of vomiting-disease.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”   _ Do you speak German?  _ the voice asked, helping him up, but careful not to touch the sick spattered over Leamas’ clothes.

“Of course I do, I'm no idiot,” Leamas responded, but in English.  “Shit- I mean- Scheisse-” he clutched his stomach.  “Fuck,” he spat, doubling over, retching again.

“Look here, let's get you somewhere else, alright?” the man asked in German.  Leamas was sure it was a man now.  

Hunched over and leaning on the man who had pulled him out of the car’s headlights Leamas sighed.  “Who are you?” he asked.

The man grunted, obviously straining under Leamas’ weight.  “Back in Berlin after about ten years, and what's the first thing I see?  Some poor old man running out into the street about to kill himself.”

Leamas’ head spun, making him forget that the man hadn't answered his question.  “Not suicidal…” he muttered, pressing his face into the man’s shoulder, slathering vomit up his side.

The man sat him down at some table- he wasn't sure where; the world was spinning too fast for him to even see who the man was.

“Wait a moment…” Leamas grumbled, “did you just call me ‘old man’?”

There was a scraping noise as the stranger pulled up a chair.  He forced a glass of water into Leamas’ hands.  “Here.  Drink.”  

It seemed to help.  The world stopped quivering so much.  They were at a rundown restaurant jammed in an alleyway.  The light inside flickered weakly, outlining the stranger.

The light gave his skin a luminous complexion, as if his pale skin were glowing, and not the lightbulbs.  However, Leamas saw that his face was hollow and bony where lack of food had eaten away at his health.  As the stranger sat down, Leamas saw his emaciated legs under too-short hand me down trousers.

“Why'd you ever want to come back to Berlin?” Leamas said.  

The man shrugged.  “Work, mostly.”

“Got family in the city?”

The man seemed to freeze, as if time had suddenly stopped working: halfway through a breath, an action, a thought.  Then the moment was over.  “No I don't.”

He was wearing a shirt that had a multitude of tiny holes in it, trousers that hung above his ankles, and shoes whose soles had begun peeling.  He had dark hair- it was hard to see what colour exactly in the dimming lights - and long fingers.  His nails were in a sorry state.  Short and jagged, with red marks.  He also had a heavy bag.

Leamas reached out a hand- one not sticky with sick.  “Pleased to meet you.  The name’s Alec.”  Leamas had no idea why he'd given the man his real name.  It could have been because he was drunk or because he was careless.  It didn't really matter anyway did it?  It wasn't as if Berlin was a bed of danger for spies anymore- there was no Gestapo to worry about.

The man took it, shaking it a bit weakly.  They both sipped their water.  The waiter cleaning the table next to them paid no attention.

“Why’d you pull me out of the street?”  Leamas asked.

The man looked at him in surprise.  “What you should really be asking is why you stepped into the street.”

“Drunk.”

“What for?”

Leamas bit his lip.  “My job.  Shitty thing.  Drives me to drink.”  Even in the dark, Leamas felt the man’s piercing gaze.  To fill the silence, he added, “Never drunk this much, not even during the war.  In the war, you had a reason not to.”

He noticed how pale the stranger’s fingers were on the water glass.  So pale, Leamas thought, so thin.

“Have a place to stay?” Leamas asked offhandedly, trying to change the subject.  The air between the two of them had suddenly become uncomfortable to breathe.

“No, I got here this afternoon.”

“Well, come to my place.  You saved my life, it's the least I can do to offer you food and a place to stay until you've gotten yourself a job.”  Leamas wasn't sure what was making him do it.  The man, although he only looked to be a few years into manhood, seemed like an honestly good person.

He seemed to hesitate.  “I- yes.  Thank you.  I'd be very grateful.”

They returned to Leamas’ flat, which lay along the borders of the Soviet and French zones.  It was small, but it had a kitchen, a fireplace, a bed, and a couch.  The young man placed his bag on the couch after taking off his shoes at the door.

“There’s a shower there.”  Leamas pointed to a room beyond the kitchen.  “You go clean yourself up while I get a fire started.”

The man looked embarrassed.  “I don't have any other clothes,” he began.  

“I'll leave some out for you,” Leamas said briskly.  

Looking ashamed, the man went to take a shower.  Out of instinct, Leamas opened his bag.  There were only books, the titles being-

“Alec?” came the voice from the bathroom, “how do you turn this on?”

Leamas blushed.  What was he doing, going through the poor stranger’s things?

He went to help. 

Eventually, the man came out of the shower, rubbing his dark hair with a towel.  Incredibly, it seemed as if he'd washed off all the grime on his face, somehow making his face even paler.  He looked ill.  He was wearing Alec’s clothes.  They were too big and baggy, making him look even more emaciated.  He looked stretched, as if he were a reflection in one of those circus mirror mazes.

Leamas went for a shower, washing all the sick off of him.  He noticed that the man hadn't left a single trace of dirt in his shower.

He came out and sat next to the man curled up on the couch in front of the fire.  He was reading a thick book and seemed a million miles away.

Leamas was shocked.  The title read,  Mein Kampf .   _ Surely _ the man couldn’t be a Nazi, he thought, stomach churning.  

Then Leamas saw the orange light flicker in the reflection of the man’s deep brown eyes.  They were thick with tears.  One splashed onto a page and the man wiped it off.  Those pages did not deserve his tears.

He seemed to notice Alec sitting there at last.  “You know… understanding ideology is very important to me.” He didn’t seem embarrassed that he’d been caught crying.  “But they say understanding is the first step to forgiveness.  And I cannot- I must never forgive Hitler.  I must never forgive Naziism.  And yet I need to understand.”

Leamas didn't immediately know what to say.  He just plucked the book out of the man’s hands and closed it.  Then he leaned his head against the armrest on his side of the sofa.  “What other books do you have there?  Read one you like…” Leamas felt himself drifting off.  His toes against the stranger’s ankles made him feel less alone.  

He looked up sleepily.  The man was reading  The Communist Manifesto .  Leamas chuckled as he closed his eyes.  “Good night, Comrade,” he said, with a bare hint of sarcasm.

The man chuckled.  “Communism is the future of the world, Alec,” he said.  He was so young.

They'd talked some more, contrasting the man’s idealism with Leamas’ cynicism.  They'd laughed, probably.  Once, the man had passed Alec the book and told him to read his annotations.  Briefly at the front of the book, under the title,  The Communist Manifesto , Leamas had seen the words scribbled in:  

 

_ To Jens, 1937 _

 

Leamas had woken up the next day.  The man, Jens, was gone.  His clothes had been folded up and put away neatly.  It was as if he had never been there.

 

\---

 

“Alec- Alec!  Are you alright?  Alec, for goodness’ sake-”

“Oh God Fiedler, I met  _ you _ in Berlin-  here!”  He looked around.  This was the little café the stranger had taken him.  “Shit, why didn't you say anything?”  Leamas shouted in surprise.  He stood up.  The smell of sick had vanished from his mind.

Fiedler’s eyes widened.  It was as if a fire had begun sparkling behind his chocolate coloured eyes.  “You remember?  Everything?  I'd almost given up-”

“Jesus Fiedler, I don't know how I'd forgotten!  You- you saved my life.”

“You were drunk, what can I say?” Fiedler said wryly.  Then his enthusiasm bubbled up like fizzing champagne.  “Do you remember us talking in front of the fire?  I can never forget.”

Leamas frowned.  “The last thing I remember is us talking.  What- did I say something?”

“You fell asleep on the same couch, with me.  We were both half asleep-” Fiedler laughed delightedly.  “You asked me which communist revolutionary’s hair I wanted.  You said I'd look absolutely hideous in a Lenin beard.”  He grinned.  “You were very drunk,” he said happily.

Leamas groaned.  “Don't know why you're so excited, Jens.  Just because we go back, doesn't mean I'll play along with your interrogation games.”  Fiedler’s face fell slightly.  “Although I will admit you'd make a fine Marx impersonator.”

Fiedler snorted, looking once again like the absurdly young man who had pulled him out of the street.  He stroked his bare face.  “I'm not sure I have the facial hair for that,” he said carefully, his eyes dancing.

They stared into the other’s eyes, for the first time remembering that there was something important and wonderfully beautiful in them.

**Author's Note:**

> please suggest more things i should write for this pairing it gives me strength  
> ALSO I REALLY WANNA WRITE FIEDLER'S BACKSTORY IN THE GERMAN SECRET SERVICE 
> 
> ps I might write another variation of how this scene went just because there are so many possibilities :/// Inner me: ::::DDDDD


End file.
